Multitasking

I have been busy, really busy. I'm trying to get new book projects, both involving lots and lots of artwork, into shape to submit. I'm creating a logo for a new website by Lyn Pollard; it's about learning differences and it's called Different Doodles. (I'll post here when it goes up, but meanwhile you can check out Lyn's other site, Chalkydoodles). I've done some new Humanimal Doodles for Odyssey magazine. You can see the Alvinella doodle on my website. But also I've been dealing with blizzards, blackouts, birthdays, and Thanksgiving, teaching writing and doodling at libraries and schools around the state, and being on a panel (along with Lauren Baratz-Logsted, Natasha Friend, Sarah Darer Littman, and Esther Friesner), We were talking to a wonderful group of young adult librarians who are Connecticut Library Association members. Wow!

And also, good news: yesterday, Doodlebug won the Connecticut Book Award for children's writing. I'm thrilled -- and also excited to have gotten a signed copy of one of the children's illustration award-winning books, Chalk, by Bill Thomson, and to have finally gotten to talk to Wendell Minor about painting.

There is always a big part of me -- a really big, shy part -- that wishes to just sit and draw. It seems that all around me there are opportunities and invitations to draw, such as this one, sent to me by my brother Bill, who went to Pratt Institute, the art school, and saw this sign during a visit.

I'm looking forward to following up with some of the results of this. Check it out at Pratt's sketchbook site.

I've discovered some other amazing drawing going on around New York. For instance, did you hear about Christoph Niemann, who not only ran the New York Marathon, but doodled the whole time he did it? You can see his sketches in yesterday's New York Times magazine, and here.

And then there is Eric Molinsky, who is using his iPhone's Sketchbook ap to draw people he sees on the subway. There's a video about him, and he has a website with hundreds of his drawings, which look like some kind of crazy Maira Kalman wallpaper. Since having lost my power for two different weeks of this year and seen my work suffer from not being able to get on the interwebs, I got an iPhone. And next, I'm getting Sketchbook.

I'm surrounded by inspiration.